Air Canada nearly denied a Canadian woman from boarding a flight with her service dog
A Vancouver woman is speaking out after she was nearly denied boarding on an Air Canada flight with her service dog.
On July 22, 2026, Kaia Eades, her service dog, August, and her mother, Kaare Long, were set to fly from Toronto to Vancouver. They had provided Air Canada with August’s necessary paperwork and confirmed with the airline multiple times in advance that there would be space for the 70-plus-pound lab.
But when they arrived at the boarding gate, they learned that the airline did not have an extra seat for him.
Eades was diagnosed with a form of epilepsy shortly after she graduated high school in 2020. She had just spent the past two-and-a-half weeks undergoing training with August, provided by the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides, to develop “that teamwork and that partnership” between them. She was bringing August home to Vancouver, where she lived at the time.
“It was absolutely phenomenal,” Eades said of the training, adding that there were two other girls in the group who were close to her age and there to receive seizure response dogs, all of whom bonded.
But that trip nearly took a sideways turn at the airport, with both Eades and her mother concerned about how the situation was handled and how the airline manages its accessibility accommodations more broadly.
While a flight attendant eventually gave up her seat so that they could board the flight with August, Eades said the story could have played out much differently.
“I don’t want any other person who has a service dog or a service animal to truly suffer and have to go through what I did in that situation,” she said.
‘Life changing’
Since 2020, Eades’ epilepsy has been recurring “on and off.” She said during COVID, she saw an advertisement for Lions Foundation’s service dogs and applied for it. About a year and a half later, she heard back from them, and her application process was furthered.
Now, Eades has had August for a few months, and she says it has been “life-changing,” and that it is hard to quantify just how much he and the Lions Foundation have positively affected her.
Kaia Eades/Submitted
Eades is often home by herself, as her partner is a construction worker who works long hours. With August by her side, she said she has the confidence of “knowing that I’m not alone if I were to have a seizure.”
If Eades has a seizure, August will start barking and will not stop until he’s told, “Okay, that’s enough.” Then, he helps Eades through her post-seizure state, lying down beside her and cuddling her.
“It’s very confusing coming out of the seizures,” she said.
Further, if Eades isn’t able to call her partner in another room, August knows how to go get him and lead him back to her. He can also fetch her medication, bark for help if she asks him to, or pick something up if she drops something and is too dizzy to pick it up.
“It‘s such simple things like that,” said Eades. “It’s extraordinarily helpful because after my seizures, I can be extremely dizzy and the up and down motion for two to three days is really hard on my brain, because my brain feels bruised.”
With August by her side, Eades has more independence in day-to-day life.
“[He] makes me feel like I can confidently — even when I go to the grocery store with my boyfriend — walk a couple aisles away and not fear that anything’s going to go terribly wrong. Because even if it did, I would have my dog with me, and my boyfriend would immediately know,” she said.
“It takes a huge weight off of my shoulders knowing that I have this dog with me.”
Prior to getting August, she said the last time she went for a walk by herself, she had a seizure, fell, split her chin open, and needed six stitches. When she woke up, she was surrounded by strangers.
“That was the first time I had walked alone in a long time, and that was the last time I have walked alone for a long time,” she said.
While Eades said she’s still scared about going out on her own — even with August — she is taking him out on walks.
“It helps me gain the confidence in knowing that I can just go outside and be okay just for a little bit, just little 10-minute spurts at a time.”
What went wrong with the flight?
Prior to Eades travelling to Toronto for the service dog training, she said she had called Air Canada about a month or two beforehand to make sure they knew that they would be flying back from Toronto to Vancouver with a service dog. She said that the person she spoke with had confirmed that “everything was all good” and that they would have an extra seat prepared.
BD Images/Shutterstock
On July 13 — over a week before the flight — she submitted the Air Canada service dog form, which had included August’s weight, height, length, and width.
On July 18, Air Canada confirmed that August was added to the reservation.
And on July 22, the day of the flight, a Lions Foundation instructor joined them at check-in to ensure that they had the extra seat for August.
But after they went through security and found their departure gate, things took a turn. Eades went to get food, and when she returned to the gate, she saw her mom talking to the staff at the departure gate. She learned that August did not have a seat reserved for him on the flight.
On the day of the flight, Eades, her mom, and August checked in, with one of the Lions’ trainers coming with them to the front desk to once again ensure that August would be able to get on the flight.
“We were told that there were no extra seats on the plane and that we would not be getting home on that day, and that there were no other flights going out to Vancouver, and we would have to wait another day,” said Eades.
Eades and her mother had already checked their carry-on luggage onto the flight, which contained medication Eades needs to take twice per day, as well as August’s food.
The attendant at the departure gate told them they had not filled out a specific form that was needed for August to get on the plane.
“She basically just was bringing it back on us, and making it feel like it was our fault because we didn’t fill out the right forms. [But] we had gotten past every other point, and they all had said, ‘Yeah, you have an extra seat for the dog, everything’s good, don’t worry about it.'”
Eades’ mom, Long, told Daily Hive that Air Canada “never clearly told what this additional form was, why it was required, or why it had not been identified during the advance approval process.”
Meanwhile, while they had these discussions, the rest of the plane boarded. Eades and Long worried that they’d have to spend an additional night in Toronto without their luggage, medication, or dog food.
Finally, a flight attendant volunteered to give up their seat and sit in the cockpit, which the pilot approved, so that August could have a seat with them on the ride home.
Still, Eades said it was awkward to have to walk on a fully boarded plane, guiding a large service dog, with people staring as they boarded the plane and found their seats.
Eades thinks that the only reason they were able to find a solution is that Long was able to calmly talk through the situation. She said that if she had been travelling alone, without her mother, the situation might have played out differently.
“I can almost guarantee I probably would have gotten super stressed out to the point it would have induced a seizure, so I wouldn’t have gotten on the plane,” she said.
Sean Davidson, a spokesperson for Air Canada, told Daily Hive that while the service dog had been approved for travel in advance, their “policy regarding additional floor space was incorrectly applied due to an error.”
“We recognize that it was distressing to arrive at the gate without the necessary floor-space accommodation reflected in the seating arrangement.”
“At the gate and prior to departure, our team moved other customers to resolve the seating issue. The customer, her companion, and service dog travelled on their booked flight,” he added.
What’s happened since then?
Since returning home, Long has submitted a complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency and communicated with Air Canada about her concerns.
“In subsequent correspondence, Air Canada confirmed that August’s documentation had been received and approved before departure,” Long told Daily Hive in an email. “However, it has still not identified the supposedly missing medical form or explained why gate personnel insisted it was required.”
“This is one of the central issues in our complaint. We followed the instructions provided by Air Canada’s Accessibility Services, received written approval, and were repeatedly assured everything was arranged, only to be told at the gate that we had failed to complete an additional requirement that had never been communicated to us.”
She said that in the months since, they have been offered a $100 coupon or a 15 per cent promo code (which they did not accept) and said that the airline has not provided a “clear explanation of why the accommodation was not properly arranged.”
“What concerns me most is the apparent lack of accountability for Kaia’s treatment and the failure to recognize the seriousness of placing a passenger with a disability in that situation.”